Hold on Tight

Friday afternoon finds me frantically scrubbing my wood floors. 

I am frantically scrubbing my wood floors because it's not a running day and I'm worrying. 

I could worry for a living. 

I'm worrying because I caught myself humming La Vie en Rose.  I'm worrying because I'm about to have a really good weekend. I'm worrying because my friends are about the meet the guy I'm dating.

I'm worrying because I'm really fucking happy.

I'm worrying because I'm waiting for the bottom to fall out.

And since I can't channel the worrying into a sub ten-minute mile or a ten mile run, I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor.

It gives me something to do while I'm worrying.

***

I'm standing at the top of the bluff, shaking. 

"C'mon, Kel!" My mother's voice is quiet from so far below. "You can do this!"

My climbing coach is standing next to me trying, quite literally, to talk me down. 

"Kelly, You did the hard part. You got up the route. Getting back down shouldn't be hard. You've got this."

I shake my head, tears dripping from my closed eyes. If I could stop shaking long enough to talk I would tell him that I want to hike back down with him. I can't do this. I can't rappel down this thing. I can't step backwards off the edge of this and trust that the ropes will catch me. 

I can't. 

He leans in and gives me a bit of advice. "Take three deep breaths. Close your eyes. Hold on to the ropes tight, and take one big step."

I do.

***

I've been thinking a lot about Sandman recently.

A friend of mine has started reading comics and I've been proselytizing Saga (duh) and Sex Criminals (less of a duh) and thinking a lot about rereading Sandman along with them. My signed copy of Preludes and Nocturnes is sitting next to my door, and I see it every day when I enter and leave the house. My comic book reading club is talking about picking it up.

I'm also thinking about something a character says in volume nine.

[Love] makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside of you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, and then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you [. . .]

Fuck you, Neil Gaiman.  

***

"I can't imagine dating you."

"What? I'm delightful. I'm thoughtful and funny and smart. I've got a great rack. What the hell are you talking about?"

"We've been friends for, how long now? Long enough. Do you know how long it took me to convince you to drop your sword and shield and take off your helmet? I love you, kid, but you don't let your defenses down for anyone."  

She reaches for my hand and I pull away and reach for my keys. "I've gotta go." 

The look on her face as the door shuts is not entirely unfamiliar. 

***

"Hey, are you ready to go in?"

We're standing outside the restaurant, dawdling.

"No."

"Why?"

I just shake my head.

"Hey." He reaches for my hand. "What's up? Let's go in."

If I could find the words I would tell him I can't. I can't trust that whatever this very new thing is will catch me on the way down.

He lets go of my hand, steps back, and I brace for whatever's coming. Or, think that I've braced for whatever's coming.

He smiles at me.

I drop the sword and shield, the helmet, the cuirass, everything, instantly, and reach up to kiss him.

"Better?" He asks when I've finished.

I nod, take a deep breath, a big step forward and grab his hand. "My friends are little odd and we've had a couple glasses of wine." When I look up at him, I see the smile around his eyes. "Hold on tight."

He does. 

30x30 #1 Run a Ragnar

A little over a week ago, I ran a 12 person, 205 mile, 30 hour relay race.

Ragnar Napa Valley was really what drove me to write my 30x30 list. It was going to be the crowning jewel of the list, the capstone to everything I did.

Yeah, the list is only about one third finished. 

I've checked off some big things that I haven't blogged about because, well, because I haven't blogged about them. I saw Hamlet live. I directed a 5K. I gave away my copies of books that changed my life and I accomplished random acts of kindness (normally in the form of baked goods). I'm giving myself until January (when I wrote my list last year) to finish the rest of it. There are things that are unlikely to happen (Century Ride, duathlon) and things I'm really looking forward to doing (best friend road trip to South Dakota, visiting the World's Largest Ball of Twine Made by One Man, hearing the Minnesota Orchestra in Orchestra Hall). 

But Ragnar was really it for me. 

One of the biggest things I wanted to do with the 30x30 list was pick things that were fun, challenging, or places where I could grow. 

Ragnar was all of those things for me. 

There are a lot of things in my life right now that are challenging my ability to write, and write well, because the sheer enormity of the experience or the emotions is hard to capture. So here's Ragnar, in brief. I learned what it means to be a team captain. I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge (Bucket List Achievement Unlocked!). I relied on strangers and watched as they turned from people I met on a San Francisco street to teammates I was excited to see at the exchanges. I found out that I'm tougher and stronger than I knew. I discovered what it means to have someone at home say "I've missed you" and mean it.

More than any of those things, though, Ragnar reminded me that I have a home.

Let me back up. For months now, I've been looking at job postings in other places. I've had the itch to move, mainly because I've rarely stayed put for this long. I was anxious and getting ready to bail, because if I didn't bail, I'd never be happy.

The dumbest part about that whole thought process?

I was happy.

Not annoyingly, disgustingly, ridiculously happy, but just happy. Content. Pleased with the direction my life was going. So, of course I had to move. Because it was possible that annoying, disgusting, ridiculous happiness was waiting for me at some other point of longitude and latitude.

Trust me, I know.

After a lot of long conversations with Kerry, I managed to calm down and resign the lease on my apartment. I told myself I would give this place another year and I was going to San Francisco in a few weeks, a city I love and a place where I've considered moving many, many times. It would be enough to get the travel bug out of my system and I could find out if my love affair with the West Coast was still a thing.

So I booked plane tickets and Air BnB rooms. I bought and broke in new running shoes and made a Wonder Woman costume. I counted down days and racked up miles. I argued with my running partner and listened while he sang me Justin Timberlake. I dreamed of Golden Gate Park and seafood.

And, meanwhile, in my real life, I got an amazing performance review at work. I met someone. I went to birthday parties and had long heart-to-hearts with my best friend. I made art for my walls and unpacked the last of my boxes.

When I landed in San Francisco the city was everything I remembered, everything I loved (a little hotter and dryer, no doubt). And I wandered Golden Gate Park and went to Muir Woods and walked next to the ocean and ate seafood. I ran Ragnar.

It was amazing.

And the whole time I was there, the Midwest poured out love and support via phone calls, texts, emails, and Facebook. I received a "kick Ragnar's ass" gift that made me melt. My Midwestern teammates, used to my emotional reactions to things, rubbed my back and insisted the team stop for chocolate milk at the end of my long run.

While I ran along the Golden Gate bridge and through Napa's rolling vineyards, I reveled in their beauty and the ability to do this difficult thing and be supported by people who love me. I kept myself going by thinking of all the people back in Middle America who were cheering me on. I made it up those final hills thinking about my job and how much I love it (also about how I will be a prairie runner FOR LIFE).  When I watched my running partner finish his final leg, I got excited about all the races and trips we have in store for us.

If Ragnar made me realize that I'm stronger and tougher than I thought, California forced me to realize that the Midwest made me that way.

Put another way, I love you, Minnesota.

Or, another way, see you next year, Great River.

The Bubble

It's unusual for me not to want to write.

Wait. That's not right. I have writer's block like everyone else. There are days when the thought of sitting in front of the keyboard and trying to hammer something out leads to me lace up my running shoes and go knock out six miles.

It's unusual for me not to want to write about relationships.

I'm a fairly introspective person, particularly when it comes to interacting with other people. On my good days it means that I am a thoughtful friend or girlfriend. It means texts during the middle of the day just to say that I'm glad you're in my life, a really good Christmas present. It means that I'll show you in a thousand small ways that you mean the world to me.

On my bad days it means that I obsess over every interaction I've had in the past two weeks. I'll have conversations in my head and finish them the way I wanted to finish them. I'll worry about how I phrased some innocuous text. I'll chew my lip over the length of time it takes someone to return an email.

Because of the way my brain is hard-wired, I write about relationships. It's how I process the world, and I usually feel better when I'm done journaling or when I've finished a blog post. It's something that's neither good nor bad, and at this point I've either wavered all of my friends or we have a tacit oral agreement that they could end up on the blog.

Right. Except not all of them.

A few weeks ago I started seeing someone new.

I cannot emphasize enough how unexpected it is. I never like anyone when I first meet them, so when we seemed to click right from the first date I was as surprised as anyone. And when I wanted to continue seeing him, and walked home from every date smiling like an idiot, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Sounds like the kind of thing I'd write about, huh?

Except I don't want to write about it.

Partly, I expect, because everything is still really new and I don't know what it is and I don't want to get too publicly excited about it (as if the idiotic grin I have on my face isn't enough of a tip-off). Because, you know, people are unpredictable.

Okay, yeah, that's part of it. But the bigger part is The Bubble.

You know that part of dating someone when you're, quite simply, dopamined out of your mind? Where it takes you twenty minutes to say goodnight and your stomach flips when you get a text message from them? Where every damn song on the radio is about you and your text messages to your best friend become completely fucking irritating?

That's The Bubble.

I'm in it. My predictive text now recognizes "swooooooon" as a legitimate word. I owe my best friend a night out and about 23 drinks. I have a list in my head of things that I can't wait to share with him. The memory of the look on his face the first time I laughed so hard I snorted makes my heart skip. Every time we discover one more thing we have in common I have to fight off the urge to kiss him. And ohmygod have I mentioned how his smile made me realize "weak at the knees" isn't just an expression?

If we were in high school (and it was 1999), I'd be making him a mixtape.

That's the reason I'm so hesitant to write about this, to write about him. Because The Bubble is such a good (and, have I mentioned, unexpected) place to find myself. Once I start writing about it there's the obvious hello, internet, welcome into my life aspect, of course. But moreover, it invites me to a level of scrutinizing this new thing that is, let's get real, unhealthy for this short of an amount of time. Part of me knows that. But the part of me that's used to writing-as-processing, that's used to over-analyzing (and over-sharing) every damn thing doesn't really know what to do. It's like there's a tiny part of my brain that's shouting "But that was a silly thing to say" and "What are you thinking?" and "YOU'RE BLOWING THIS."

But the volume on that part of my brain also seems to be turned waaaaaaay down these days (thanks again, brain chemistry!) The Bubble is going to burst at some point, I know that. Just like I know that at some point scrutiny will happen just like I'm certain that at some point I'll want to start writing about this.

For now, though, I'm happy with our long goodbyes and my shaky knees. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

Happiness is My Default

"So anyway, there's this physics professor at the U who wrote a book about the physics of superheroes." 

"Oh! Yeah, I heard him interviewed on NPR. And he has another book. . ."

"Yes! I've read it. It's called . . ."

"The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics."

It takes all of my self control not to reach across the table and kiss him, in full view of everyone on the street. First of all, because he's read a book on quantum mechanics just for the hell of it. Second, because we've finished one another's sentences twice over the course of the evening.

When the check comes and I reach for my credit card he waves me off. "I'd like to see you again. How about I get this and you get the next?"

I'm smiling so much I can't even reply.

***

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

"What?"

"You're out. In Dinkytown. At 12:30AM. In a club. And you're smiling. What the shit?"

"Happiness is my default."

"She's texting."

The couch we're sitting on doesn't really have room for a third, but he squishes in anyway.

"That can't be it. Nobody smiles that much while they're texting."

"She found someone who laughs at her grammar jokes." 

There's a collective groan. 

"You guys are a bunch of assholes."

"Just make sure that if you eventually bring him around, you bring him to our house first. We're the least judgmental of this whole group."

"What? Who are you kidding?"

I'm grateful to let the conversation devolve around me. It gives me a(nother) reason to be on my phone.

***

"Hey, are you all right?"

"Yes. I'm fine."

"Are you sure? You're shaking."

I take a deep breath. "Call it an involuntary stress response." 

"Bad exes?" 

"Bad exes." I shiver. "I'm sorry. That ruined what could have been a really nice goodnight." 

He smiles at me, reaches over and pushes the hair out of my eyes. "We all have something."

I bury my face in his shoulder. "That was the exact right thing to say."

I can't see his face, but I can feel him smile.

***

"Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I'd be annoying myself if I wasn't so dopamined out of my mind."

"Yeah, you're pretty disgusting. But, really. How did it go?"

"You mean, aside from the panic attack?"

"Yes. I mean aside from the panic attack."

"Well, first of all, I think everyone should have a panic attack on their second date. How the person responds to it is a good barometer for what kind of a person they are."

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"Seriously, though. I might understand why people do this now." 

"Wow."

"Yeah. It feels kinda weird to be this happy."

"I think it's a pretty good default place to be, Kels." 

"Yeah. I think so too."

Dealbreakers & Pep Talks

"I used to have a lot of stupid dealbreakers."

The car is split. Half of us are dating someone exclusively. The other half  of us are single. It's nice to have a conversation with people who are in couples, if for no other reason than it's reassuring to hear that everything isn't all rainbows and ponies once you pair off with someone. It's also nice to have a single representative of the XY crowd to get some feedback on the Loop of Craziness that's been going on in my head lately.

"What constitutes a dealbreaker these days?"

"I can't date someone who doesn't read." 

"What if they consume their knowledge in other ways? Documentaries, audiobooks, podcasts?"

"Audiobooks are permissible. But they have to be books in some capacity. I'm going to finish somewhere between fifty and seventy-five books this year. If I can't talk to my boyfriend about what I'm reading, we aren't going to get far." I pause. "I also want to know that he'll get it, on some level, when he wakes up in the middle of the might and finds me curled up in an armchair crying over a book."

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yeah. Kids from a previous relationship. Zero professional motivation." 

"Those aren't stupid dealbreakers, Kels."

"Well, that's because I decided I needed to stop looking for reasons to dislike people. I started to wonder what I was missing out on." I smile. "And it seems to be working, 'cause I have a date that I'm actually excited about next week."

"Attagirl." 

***

"Would it be all right if I told you some of the non-serial killer things concerning me?"

"Yeah. That's fine. I'm listening."

Michelle and I are having a pre-first date pep talk.

"Number one."

"There's a list?"

"Yes. Shut up. Number one: I don't remember how to kiss someone. Number two: I don't know when, you know, after you start dating someone it's all right to start having sex. Number three: I'm worried he's secretly gained 180 pounds and hasn't updated his profile pictures and I'm not going to be attacted to him. Number four: I'm afraid number three makes me shallow. Number five: I'm worried we've texted and emailed everything we could possibly say to one another and we're just going to be awkward. Number six: I don't know when to disclose, um, things like preferences and the OCD."

"Uh. Okay. Where do you want me to start."

"IT'S A LIST."

"Okay, okay. With number one . . ."

I interrupt her immediately. "I'm also worried he's a serial killer."

***

"Are there other stories that have stayed with you? You said Sandman and American Gods. You like to read, what else?"

We're about two hours into a conversation I didn't expect to last more than fifteen minutes and I'm so pleased by the question that I clap my hands and pull my chair in closer to the table. I flip my clutch over and the front is a reproduction of an out of print cover of The Great Gatsby. "I reread Gatsby every year. It has this line I love from it. Well. It has a lot of lines I really love in it." 

"Can you tell me any of them?"

I pause, considering. "Reserving judgement is a matter of infinite hope." 

Some Messages

"I mean, if it all goes south you'll have good material for your blog."

"I'd prefer not to think of my dating life as potential terrible stories to share."

"Yeah, but imagine the clicks you'd get!"

"I know. People seem to really enjoy my misery." (Pause) "You aren't helping."

"I'm trying to buck you up."

"I don't need to be bucked up! I need to not be excited about this in case it ends up disappointing."

"Ha! You, not excited? Is that possible?"

"No. Not really."

***

"Hey, thanks for your interest, but kids are not my thing, and I'm afraid they're a dealbreaker for me. Good luck."

"They live with their mother."

"Still, I'm sorry, not my thing. Good luck."

"God, you didn't seem like you would be so fucking shallow."

***

"Hey, apparently I'm supposed to message you because algorithms say we're compatible."

"Well, who am I to argue with mathematics?"

"Let's get the shibboleths out of the way. I love Neil Gaiman. Doctor Who isn't my thing, but I love The West Wing and The Wire. I've played in more than one tabletop game tournament."

"You're cleared for further conversation."

"Here's the thing. I don't know how you feel about meeting dating site people after one good email exchange, but I'd like to meet you for a drink so we can talk about books." 

"You said the magic phrase: "talk about books." Where and when?" 

***

"It just seems kinda weird to be getting all fluttery about someone I haven't met yet. I don't want to get too amped up and then just be disappointed."

"Yeah, that's legitimate."

"Blorch."

"I mean, to be fair, I had this same conversation with my bestie when she was emailing with her (now) husband."

"Oh man, and he's wonderful. They're wonderful."

"Yeah. So. I mean. Don't go in there with your dander up just for the sake of not being disappointed."

"As always,  you are the source and fountain of all truth. I love you like I love Doctor Who."

"Love you too, Kel."

***

"CAN I BE UR SLAVE OVER SKYPE?"

"Um, huh?"

"CAN I BE UR SLAVE OVER SKYPE?"

"Okay. First order, always spell out the word "your." Second order, never contact me again."

***

"I laughed and groaned at that one."

"I'm just pleased I'm still cleared for further conversation." 

"I realize this is going to make me sound tragically unhip, but I also have to confess that I *really* don't like Murakami." 

"Yes, but have you played Murakami bingo?"

"Oddly, yes."

"And I was worried we were going to run out of things to talk about."